Chong replaces Keith Jackson, who left the board in June to take a job as coordinator for a city recycling program.

Brown, who said he consulted closely with Supervisor Mabel Teng, made a point of choosing an Asian American candidate.

"I actually restricted my search on this occasion to find the best qualified candidate from the Asian community," Brown said. "It so happened that in the process, I found the best qualified candidate period. I talked with a number of people, both Asian and non-Asian, and in every category this person received the highest marks."

According to the most recent school district census, children of Chinese, Southeast Asian, Filipino, Korean and Japanese ethnicities make up nearly 50 percent of the district's students.

Chong said that although he is committed to working in behalf of all students in the school district, he is particularly sensitive to the concerns of Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander parents.

"I've talked with a lot of these parents, and some of the issues they've raised are Lowell High School and the admission caps, and access to the district office -- many of our parents are monolingual," he said.

Although high-achieving Asian American students tend to receive the most attention, Chong said the "model minority" stereotype overshadows the problems of other Asian American students.

"I've gone to a lot of forums in the Asian Pacific Islander community about children at risk," he said. "We have to look at the factors -- similar to the reasons African Americans, Latinos and whites do not excel. I do not want to perpetuate the model minority stereotype."

"I'm an ABC from NYC -- an American-born Chinese," said Chong, who was educated in New York public schools. He moved to California when he was 18 to attend the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned degrees in social welfare and Asian American studies.

He is married to Donna Eng, an early-childhood development specialist at Wu Yee Children's Services in San Francisco. They live in the Richmond District with their 2 1/2-year-old and 18-month-old daughters.

"As a parent of two children who will be entering the school system in the millennium, I want to make sure that the schools are of a quality that I can send my children there without having to move to Piedmont or Hillsborough," Chong said.

Chong said that he supported the district's resistance to scaling back bilingual education in accordance with the state mandate. He said he had visited several schools and talked with teachers who think the extended form of bilingual education is better.

"I'm a staunch supporter of bilingual education," Chong said. "The City and County of San Francisco need to look at all avenues to preserve it. We need to put children above politics."